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Sunday, 30 September 2012

Getting Rodgered

Brendan
Rodgers is Liverpool Football Club’s newest scapegoat. My apologies- newest
manager (Don’t know where that came from!). His first four months have been
about as arduous as one would expect a Liverpool manager’s first four months to
be. He was unveiled on the 1st
of June this year as a manager whose “appointment today as manager of Liverpool
Football Club is one of the most important steps in building the kind of club
on and off the pitch supporters can be excited about”. Being in a relegation
battle would be exciting I suppose?

Innocuous
mockery aside, I have no intention of bludgeoning Liverpool Football Club or
Brendan Rodgers. This is not a critique of Liverpool’s start to the League this
season. Quite the contrary- this is an optimistic look at what has been an
optimistic (though fairly unsuccessful) start for them this season.

Right- now
that the Liverpool fans are reading again I shall proceed. Liverpool’s start
(and consequently Brendan’s) has been marred by poor results- not poor
performances. Even the staunchest of Manchester United supporters (read me)
would have to agree that the better team did not win this weekend. The home
side were better in most areas of the pitch and, in fact, seemed to be
controlling the game even with ten men. Sir
Alex said after the game that it’s the result that matters and the performance
(good as it may be) is inconsequential if you lose. Of course a winning manager
would say that but there were many positives for the weekend’s losers to take
out of that game.

It wasn’t a
one-off performance either. Manchester City were given a fantastic match at
Anfield and were probably (some would say) lucky to come away with a point. Having
also watched Liverpool in the Europa League, I can say their mid-field play at
times this season has been exceptional. Joe Allen, Steven Gerrard and Jonjo
Shlevey have been dominant in possession in the middle of the park. And Raheem
Sterling has been a live-wire down the right flank. The back four have also
looked decent enough- though injuries to Agger and Kelly will expectedly weaken
them. They also lost an integral cog in their mid-field machine in Lucas and
have coped reasonably well. Nuri Sahin looks a quality loan signing and
consistent under-performers like Downing and Henderson have been rightfully
exiled to the Elba of the bench. Charlie Adam was exiled beyond Elba. To Stoke.

The Achilles’
heel rather evidently is the attack. A really good attack can win you the
League and a really poor one can get you relegated. Just look at Wolves last
season. Luis Suarez with his cleverness and his dribbling ability is a
fantastic player but has a woeful conversion ratio for a man who is supposed to
be a goal-scorer. His partner, Borini, is a highly rated twenty-one year old
who Rodgers worked with both when he was at Chelsea (as the youth team coach)
and also for a brief period at Swansea City (Borini was on loan). He will need
some time, though, to re-adjust to the speed of the Premier League given his
stint in Italy with Roma. To make matters bleaker, Liverpool had a calamitous
culmination to the transfer window as they sent Carroll off on loan and ended
up caught between the Devil and the deep blue Dempsey.

When one
takes all these circumstances into account, it really puts Liverpool’s start
into a lot more perspective. It hasn’t been atrocious by any stretch of the
imagination. The answer is not to start raising questions about Brendan
Rodgers’ aptitude and certainly not to start questioning his ethos. The answer
is not to target the easy scapegoat. The answer, quite simply, is to give him
some time. The football his side are playing offers a lot of promise and when
the philosophy is right, it’s only a matter of time before the results start
falling in place as well. In an era when Chairmen are changing managers faster
than tooth-brushes, I for one certainly hope that John Henry gives Brendan a
tight hug and says- “You’ll never walk alone”. On an unrelated note I also hope
he brings his wife to more matches.